For the last two days I've been doing an eviction on Marilyn. This is one part of my job that I really hate, but somebody has to do it. For whatever reason Marilyn quit paying the note on her house...seven years ago. She has the money to pay it and she owns other property. Katrina struck and she got some things put off because of it. And then she got things put off even longer using lawyers and a myriad of excuses. I got involved in it last summer. I served her a summons to appear in court and show cause why she should still be in possession of the house. She came to court in October 2010 and the judge gave her 60 days to vacate the premises. She didn't do anything.

I got the Writ of Possession (basically an eviction order) a month ago. I left notes for her to call me after she would not come to the door. She didn't call. I was hoping I could get her to voluntarily move as most of the other folks do. Last week I left her a note that told her I would be there on 5/18/11 at 9:00 a.m. with a moving crew. (provided by the bank that now owns the property) I received a call from her lawyer Monday afternoon. He asked what my next step was and I told him I was obligated to obey the court order. He asked if I could hold off a little longer. I told him she's had seven years to take care of this problem and if he could get a court order stopping the eviction I would welcome it because I don't like doing this kind of eviction. Some evictions I don't have a problem with, especially the ones involving bad neighbors.

I had just pulled up to the house yesterday morning when another lawyer called me. Apparently Marilyn didn't like what the first one told her. I walked over to the house and there were some dogs standing at the top of a window barking at me. I later found out why they were standing at the top of the window. The moving crew was starting to arrive and I told the lawyer that if Marilyn could get over there pretty quick and get the dogs I wouldn't have to call animal control to take them to the pound. I then explained the situation to him and I could hear him tell her there was nothing she could do that she had already had her day in court.

Marilyn was taking her time getting there so the movers pryed open the carport door. They were met by one large vicious dog and two smaller yappers. They closed the door and I called animal control. Animal control got there about 30 minutes later, the same time as Marilyn who was with some guy named Bob who said he'd been living there. Bob got the dogs and put them in Marilyn's mother's 1978 Cadillac. Now I really got a good loook at the place.

The carport was piled with "stuff" in plastic bags covered with plastic tarps. There was a small path to the only usable door to the house. There was a covered patio at the rear of the house and it was piled to the roof with "stuff" in plastic bags covered by tarps. There were two outbuildings full of "stuff" and one of them was leaking bad. There was also a junk car full of "stuff". Definition of "stuff": Plastic bags of just about any imaginable "sale" items, some unused with the tags still on them, others slightly used or greatly used. Broken items not thrown away. Childrens toys dating back to the 70's. Dead animal carcasses and skeletons, some mummified. Several rats and one snake and a litter of kittens that no one knew was there. The snake wasn't poisonous so I didn't kill it. Imagine anything you've ever owned in the last 40 years and it was probably there.

After Marilyn got the dogs out we went in the house. There was a small path through the house leading to where Bob and the dogs had been living. Everything else was stuff piled to the ceiling. The stuff was compressed so apparently when it reached the ceiling it was pressed down so more stuff could be stored. There were dog feces in between the layers of the stuff inside the house. The room where Bob had been sleeping had a bed in it. Bob had to crawl over six feet of stuff to get to his bed. Bob had a bathroom but it hadn't had water in three years because the water had been cut off because the water bill was over $3,000.00. Bob was still using the bathroom.

The crew starting with the carport. At first they stacked the stuff on the tarps and dragged them to the edge of the road as the law requires. The moving foreman knew this was going to take too long so he rented a Bobcat front end loader. Marilyn and Bob wanted to get some stuff out. I told them as long as they didn't get in the way and behaved themselves they could get what they wanted. Bob got his guns and flat screen TV's and some other personal items. Marilyn got a few personal items and and then started picking up garbage and ruined items. She got broken items, rusted cans of food, things the Bobcat had run over, and anything else that wasn't any good to anybody else. She would pile all of this in the old Caddy and come back for another load. They spent the night out there with flashlights and were still there at noon today wearing the same clothes.

Marilyn's mother and her pimple face grandson showed up in a standard shift truck he couldn't drive. The grandson loaded stuff on the truck while Granny limped around cussing like a sailor and threatening everybody (I got special attention) with a cane beating. I told Marilyn if she wanted to continue to collect stuff that Granny had to go. Granny and the grandson left in the truck as the grandson went bucking and jumping down the street with stuff falling off. The sanitation department had a few more loads to go when I left late this afternoon. Marilyn and Bob had not been back since 1:00 p.m. I guess they needed a nap. Hopefully everything will be cleaned up by tomorrow.

Some of the items found under the stuff included a lawnmower, lots of tools, expired items, a utility trailer, bicycles, and the previously mentioned carcasses.

The moving crew was very efficient. They took the windows out of the house and started throwing stuff outside where the Bobcat would scoop it up and pile it by the road. The sanitation department showed up with a dump truck equiped with a knuckleboom loader and started loading the stuff up for the trip to the landfill. The pile of stuff was six to eight feet tall and as soon as the knuckleboom got a load it was replaced by the Bobcat. Six of these trucks sent here courtesy of FEMA after Katrina and were used to clean up storm damage. I don't know how we got along without them. The bed of the truck holds 24 square yards. When I left this afternoon they had hauled off 11 loads of stuff to the landfill. It will probably be over 300 square yards nasty feces infested trash before the job is completed. I've seen city dumps smaller than this. I hope the job is over. I'll check in the morning. Anybody wanna buy a house?

Couldn`t the Fire Department use it for training?

Sir.
Seems like some kerosene and a match would have helped the situation. Ashes would have been easier to haul way than stuff.
Bill@Yuma

No pics?

I assisted in an eviction a number of years ago. Guy had 30+ cat skins nailed to his walls. He also has about a dozen unskinned cats in the freezer. Looked like he had been living on them for quite a while.

Cat, the other white meat.

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OGCA Member.

I will never understand how or why some people will lower their standard of living to this level.

Mental illness. If she was picking up trash to save as you were carting it away, that's a recognized mental illness. These people can't let go of anything

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"... shall not be infringed."

Marilyn could probably run for office and get elected . . .

Cat, the other, OTHER, white meat.
Fixed it for ya.

Can't believe the bank didn't want any of that perfectly good 'stuff'...

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War Eagle! '10 BCS & '13 SEC

"Childrens toys dating back to the 70's."

Charlie, in a word........eBay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds like a fun time was had by all. When I was a social worker for the city we ran into this all the time. It was either hoarding "stuff", animals, or both. One house was so bad the fire department had to go in wearing oxygen masks. They would not let anyone else inside. I wanted to flip a match in there.

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Steve

Charlie, I had to do that once before, trash was around three feet high in the whole house. They actually put out a call to EPA who came in and bulldozed the place, there was nothing worth saving!

Whatever you and the cleanup crew are getting paid, it's not enough. I recall conducting a search warrant with a detective when we entered a dark closet. We pulled aside a clothes rack and were covered by a fine "dust", from head to foot. Fleas. Now I'm trying to imagine a realtor describing this house for perspective buyers.

Dis. Gust. Ing. Was he at least flushing the toilet by pouring water down it? Please, tell me he was occasionally pouring water down the toilet.

TV's? As in, plural?

This is a sad, sad story of wrecked lives, but not by your actions. No, the wrecking occurred decades earlier...

I also work for a Sheriff's Office. This is way more common than most people think. I had an eviction where we found a pile of USED condoms about three feet around and about 10-12 inches high....the former "residents" were using it as a crack and *** house. I can't even describe the smell. Simple rental evictions are usually pretty easy but foreclosures are generally difficult. Most owners are angry they are being put out and feel justified destroying the property before leaving. I've seen feces smeared on the walls and ceilings, used tampons stuck to countertops, food left in a refrigerator that didn't have power, maggot infestations, fleas, ticks, doors ripped off the hinges.....seriously, let your mind run wild.....that's what they will feel justified in doing.

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Un-Reconstructed Southerner

Cat, it's what fer dinner

Pretty gross. In NYC we have City Marshall's who do the evictions, the Police just maintain the peace.

We had a Central Booking facility in Brooklyn, the Police waiting room couches were infested with fleas from Cops entering crack houses.

Charlie,
You LE folks meet all the MOST interesting people.

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

Charlie, after reading about what you do for a living, I'm going to stop complaining about my job. Seems everybody has stress nowadays.
I hope you and Leland are doing okay.

Roger

Oh.. My.. God.. !!!!!!! It would be impossible for a fiction writer to top this story! I'm sure a person can develop an immunity to this sort of stuff, but I'm not too sure. That is just plain awful.
Animals do not live like this, unless it is forced on them by way of a cage or some form of confinement.

I think an earlier poster hit it on the nose. Mental Illness pure and simple. It's a doggonne shame and a lot more widespread than you think. Sad part is that a good guy like Charlie (and others like him)is often times the first and ONLY medical responder for these poor souls. Guys like Charlie do more mental health counseling than most mental health professionals-but at least they get to carry guns and get free do nuts which makes up for the lack of pay

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Forum consigliere

Thanks Charlie for another good story. I enjoy reading every one. Don

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"Don't worry be happy"

It's been said before. But, I'll mention it again.

You should write a book!

Great stories! I'd buy a copy or two.

Co write it with ferrilmerril and I'd buy multiple copies to pass out to friends.

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"... shall not be infringed."

Ohhhhhh! "Hoarders Gone Wild"... people with a lot of junk...

Not the story I was expecting... LOL

Good God Charlie; what a tale. I don't envy your job. I was a telephone repaiman for 38 years & saw some terrible places but nothing like you describe.

Just when I'd been thinking I hadn't seen a Charlie story for a while...

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Rick, W0FG
CTR2 68-72

That is just sad. Sad for her, sad for you and sad for the animals.

Sounds like my ex-wife...

We just finished up an hour ago. The sanitation department just carried the last load to the landfill. Three days and 16 truck loads of "stuff" at 4,000 lbs. a load. That's 64,000 lbs. or 32 tons if my math is right. The locks are changed, the posted signs are up, and the street is cleared again. Marilyn didn't show up today. She was seen though...at a yard sale putting "stuff" in the trunk of the old Caddy.

""Marilyn didn't show up today. She was seen though...at a yard sale putting "stuff" in the trunk of the old Caddy.""



Unbelievable.

Sadly, not unbelievable but actually fully expected. She has a recognized mental illness. She actually needs help. She will continue to acquire things and hoard them.

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"... shall not be infringed."

I worked at a water utility. One of my inspectors had a work order to take a meter out of a house in Madison WI. He was familiar with it, and asked me to go along, as it was, as he put it -spooky.
We walked in the front door, which was open. There was a narrow passage between piles of newspapers to the kitchen. I looked at the date on one-1957. This was in the mid '80s. The kitchen was full of empty bean cans, and had a pretty good stink about it. From what I could see of the living room, the finish plaster was falling off-no heat in the winter. Going down the basement stairs, we got about halfway down on stairs then we were walking on magazines. We found the meter which had frozen, and it appeared that water had gone down a nearby drain. Pulled the meter, and left. In the driveway were two cars also filled with magazines and other 'stuff' as Charlie called it. The most recent license tag was 1969.
The majority of this 'stuff' was papers and magazines-but obviously we just did what we were gonna do, and got outta there!

Another great story, Charles. Keep them coming. . .

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Festina lente - A. Caesar

And in the center of load number 12, was a bag containing a Registered Magnum box for a nickle 7 1/2" gun filled with spools of thread, sewing needles and the original registration certificate...

Back when I was a co-op student in 1980 one of the maintenance mechanics had his granfather pass away. Turned out that his grandfather was a specialist in paper, as in stacks of old magazines and newspapers that dated back to the 30's. While he as surveying the house trying to estimate how many cubic yards were involved his wife picked up a National Geographic off a stack and started thumbing through it. She found 20 dollars in Silver Certificates between the pages, two fives and a 10. That started a 6 month ordeal of going through every single stack in the house page by page. Turned out that another paper item that grandpaw specialized in hoarding was cash, they found 176,000 dollars in face value. When I told him that Silver Certificates carried a premium as a collectable, he contacted a dealer and they then had to seperate the cash into collecteable cash versus plain cash. Odd thing is they didn't find any coins and when I suggested checking the gardens with a metal detector I was told to shut my face.

I used to know a girl that always seemed to have a lot of money. I asked here if she hoarded all that money by herself. She said no. Her sister hoard half of it.

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'Merica!

Similar story. When I was in grad school a buddy was living in his future MILs mothers house. Seems the old man died and they moved the grandma into a nursing home. My friend needed a place to stay (just out of the army.) So the deal was he needed to clean the house up and throw away everything. His future MIL and her sister had already looted all the silverware and jewelry. Nothing left but junk from the 1930s on. And the family had already been at war over the inheritance for a couple of years. Hence the vanishing jewelry and silver.

So I was kind of handicapped. I had a several months old son, and my wife worked 2nd shift as a nurse. I just picked up the kid and went visiting. Babies sleep most of the time anyhow. As we were boxing up books to toss out (none interesting titles), I opened one and found a $20 bill inside. I said "Hey Ralphie, look at this". He was shocked, then upset. So we had to unbox all the books and go through them, finding untold amounts of cash. So the clean up procedure changed dramatically.

And he had a problem (I didn't.) I had no claim to any of it, I was just helping out a buddy. We split a 6 pack and discussed it. Because I was a law student, he figured I had some kind of moral compass. I had to explain that law schools selected their students because of a lack of morality! His problem was who to tell, or if he should tell anyone. I never knew (or wanted to know) what the total he found was. I know it was well over $15,000. But had he told his fiancee, she'd have been torn on if she should tell her mother. We already had strong indications of her proclivity toward pocketing things she'd found.

My guess was always that Ralph just pocketed the cash and spent it on them in the future. I've never asked him, and I don't think I want to know. At this point it would just cause trouble.

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Dick Burg